A Hundred Miles Off | Record Collection
By NICK SYLVESTER | June 16, 2006
BLOGGERS NEED NOT APPLY: But A Hundred Miles Off is good bar music
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Granted the best song here is a big dig on the city of Boston, and Hamilton Leithauser’s reedy voice has gone from Dylanesque to Dylan forgery, and there’s no one massive track to rally behind – no “The Rat” or “We’ve Been Had” or even “Wake Up.” But what all the 19-year-olds with mp3 blogs and a stack of shitty indie promos aren’t telling you about this NYC rock band’s third album is that it sounds great in bars. Makes sense for that set too – no fey bushy-tailed bullshit, just the gritty banalities of growing old or knowing its around the corner. Slower, barely calypso lilts like “Louisiana” feel less like blind throwbacks, more like worn-in shoes, comfortable and above all reliable. “Tenleytown” has huge U2 stop-poverty-now chords, but the production, typical of the rest of Hundred Miles, is decidedly more working class – the instruments bleed together, which is easier on the ears and grounds the weary sentiment. Walkmen get their Dischord punk kicks out in “This Job Is Killing Me,” but the nostalgia runs only three chords deep. “You wear yourself out,” they say. On the Web
The Walkmen: http://www.marcata.net/walkmen/
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